Where today's Arrowhead Apartments in Branch Hill are now located was once the site of a beautiful golf course owned by a man named Gaither. The building which would become the Arrowhead Inn was nothing more than a rundown barn on the edge of the golf course. In order to draw an elite clientele from nearby Indian Hill, the barn was cleaned and painted. On the inside velvet drapes were hung everywhere.
Joseph S. Bauer was a well respected man from Cincinnati with a love for gambling. Bauer struck a deal with the Cleveland syndicate to supply the bankroll for the new club. Two brothers, Harold & Sam Nason, known gamblers, were rought in to run the gambling operations while Bauer would be the front man and get the fix with Clermont county. The Nasons also brought in Sleep-out Louie Levinson and Left Clark from Detroit to help with the operations.
It is not known exactly when the club first opened but in 1935 they were on a roll. Big name entertainment and gambling was available in plush surroundings. By 1937, the only club to rival the Arrowhead was Peter Schmidt's Beverly Hills in Southgate, Kentucky.
Monthly payments were made to Cleveland and the powers that be in Clermont county. Bauer needed a bag man to distribute the regular payment. He found a local minister. Bauer would pay the minister who distributed the funds to the proper authorities. Bauer was never to know who received payments or how they were distributed. The Clermont County Prosecutor at the time was believed to have looked the other way. By late 1936 things began to heat up a bit and Cleveland sent the Nason brothers to Northern Kentucky to start a dog racing track. This adventure failed quickly and the Nason brothers returned to Branch Hill.
In August 1937, Joseph Bauer died suddenly and it was then up to the Nason brothers to run the Arrowhead. One little problem, they had no idea who, how, or where to make the local payoffs. The bag man never came forward for his monthly stipend. Some believe the county Prosecutor had given the minister orders to back off.
The Nason brothers continued operations until November 1937. The county Prosecutor sent orders to close the club down. The orders were ignored. On November 19th, 1937, the Prosecutor himself led the raid that closed the Arrowhead Inn for good. All of the equipment was confiscated. The new County courthouse in Batavia was the recipient of some of the furnishings. The Grand Jury room got a craps table with the felt removed and the legs shortened.
The Nason brothers remained in the gambling business and held on to the old tradition of sending monthly payments to Bauer's widow.
This article was submitted by Larry Curless. It is based on an article in Gaming Times magazine by Gene Trimble published in May of 1999. This article appeared in the April 2009 edition of GMAHS newsletter The Valley Enterprise.
